The Third Alternative

An unbelievable quantity of nonsense comes across my Facebook page from friends who forward what appear, on first glance, to be wise sayings to live by.  I find myself picking apart a great many of them, after which I am probably perceived to be a curmudgeon who will leave no good idea unpunished.  I don't care who uttered the quote.  I am as likely to attack Einstein and Plato as your next-door blogger.

I try to control myself, I really do, with varying degrees of success.  So I thought perhaps if I am to have any online friends left that I would begin to publish my own words of wisdom and leave their forwarded wisdom alone.  It is true that I haven't come up with an idea to rival the Theory of Relativity, but I know something about something, and if I keep on at the rate I'm going, I'll soon be to the age where I might qualify to possess a sage's wisdom.

And so I shall presume.

And in so doing, perhaps I can occupy myself so as not to attack the likes of Einstein and Plato and even Mother Theresa, complaining of their seesaw thinking.

An example of seesaw thinking is the either-or choice:  If you are this, then you cannot be that.  If you are on the up end, you're not on the down end.  The possibility of a balanced seesaw is ignored.  You must be up or down, and there is no third alternative such as being on the swings or slides, and not interacting with the seesaw at all.  Such quotes often start out "There are only two ways to...."

A close relative of seesaw thinking is all-inclusive thinking.  These quotes usually have the word "all" in them.  All something is this, without exception.  All immigrants.  All Christians.  All Liberals.  All women.  All-inclusive thinking is the birthplace of prejudice.  When we don't know the individuals, we tend to speak in terms of "all", and upon this comes the first the stereotype and soon along comes the paper tiger that must be destroyed.

Most of the quotes that raise my hackles fall under these two categories.  At the risk of being all-inclusive, I will say that I have observed them coming from "all" belief systems and political persuasions.  As a result, I offend everyone, as I run, tilting my sword equally at quotes that assure me that all Republicans, all vegetarians, all animal lovers, all all all....  I don't believe in all, probably because I have been the exception to so many rules.  I am the third alternative in a two-alternative universe.

Here is my first constructive response.  It is inspired by a post I saw recently that assures us that we aren't as broken as we think we are even though we may have "a couple scars and a couple bad memories," and that all great heroes do.  I like the gist of the quote, that heroes are scarred by definition.  What I dislike is the way it downplays the damage a person may have endured, minimizing it as merely a couple scars and a couple bad memories.  I dislike the sweeping generalization that we aren't as broken as we think we are, for some of us are exactly that broken, perhaps more so than we think we are, and denial does not help heal us.

But rather than attack the post, and thus the person posting it, I have sheathed my sword and created my own words of wisdom.